The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program for the same, and more particularly, to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method enabling easy extraction of a popular program from program information, and a program for the same.
With the advent of a hard disk recorder used for recording a TV broadcast program, now a user can record (video-tape) a TV program in a large capacity hard disk and enjoy (reproduce) the recorded TV program at a date and time different from those on which the TV program was actually broadcasted and also regardless of the program sequence. Because of the convenience, a user is now apt to record programs regardless of whether the user actually reproduce and enjoy each of the programs, and therefore there is a possibility that, although a large number of programs are recorded in a large capacity hard disk, the program are kept idle among a vast amount of contents and are not actually reproduced.
If a user can focus attention on to a currently popular program and record the program in a hard disk, the opportunity for the user to reproduce and enjoy the program may increase because the program is popular, which makes it possible to reduce the chances that the contents is recorded uselessly.
With this configuration, however, the user is required to search for a currently popular program from information introduced on newspapers or TV information magazines, or from a medium making use of the Internet.
To solve the problem as described above, there has been proposed an invention for enabling extraction of keywords from program information to array the program in the descending order of the number of keywords appearing in each program so that a popular program can be extracted (Refer to, for instance, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 10-42234, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 10-42235, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 10-42236).
Simply with rearrangement of programs in the descending order of the number of keywords, for instance, general words such as “baseball” or “drama” may be extracted as a keyword, and therefore sometimes an actually popular program may be missed.